The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales

The title piece in this anthology is a parable about the nature of religious belief. When first published in 1932 received much attention, and we wondered whether the intervening 75 years might have made it somewhat less of a shock. We found that apart from a violation of the current political correctness and a few inevitable stylistic issues, the message was not lost its poignancy and perhaps little of its ability to shock.

The Black Girl "in the search for God is not a novel or a novella. It is not really a story either. We choose to describe it as a parable because others have, but it could be classified together with Plato's Symposium, as a tool for examining a philosophical idea. It is not a discourse, but it could be a meditation, albeit a rather energetic one. The idea in question, of course, is the nature of religious belief.

Black Girl of the title is only cast as such, we believe that giving Shaw with a literary vehicle to convey his otherwise naïve questions about Christianity. To this end, The Black Girl is presented as a "noble savage", and thus a tabula rasa. It is here - and only here - that Shaw violates applicable correctness. Character could have been subjected as a child, but she could not have threatened to swing her knobkerrie, her arms, and even she could have been portrayed as bringing no tradition of her own. We must accept therefore that there remains a functionality on the role of this nature. She does not represent anything other than her ability to ask the questions she is obliged to ask.

Black Girl has been converted to Christianity from a young British woman who took pleasure in amorously jilting a series of Vicars. She is as a missionary, despite her clearly thin grasp of the subject. She is perhaps an allegory of colonial expansion. She goes abroad to teach others, even though they have not achieved compliance or knowledge of his own life. It may be important for the teacher and the taught are both women.

When her convert starts asking questions, fundamental questions that the missionary himself has never heard asked, never mind answered that she returns to the invention, not scholarship. Shaw's intention is clear. She invents myth to mystify myth. And this jacket satisfy the curiosity of the average Christian, but not The Black Girl, so go out and seek God.

And, guided by snakes, she finds him. And not just once, because there is more than one God in the Bible she carries. There is God Wrath requiring sacrifice for her child. When she can not comply, He demands she find her father so he can sacrifice her. A good part of the Bible thus disappears from her newfound faith.

She meets a seemingly God of love, but he laughs at the job for being so naive and blind believers. Several of her book blows away.

She meets prophets who one by one, deliver their individual messages, most of which conflict and communicate individual political positions or bigotry rather than personal revelation.

On the way she belittles Imperial power and male dominance. She learns that most "civilized" countries have given up on God and hear a prayer that people like her should not be taught things that our country no longer believe.

Scientists offer her equally conflicting opinions. They are careful only to describe, never to conclude or interpret. In a sense, they are just modern prophets, each with their own interested positions.

There is an astonishing incident in which a mathematician implore her to consider complex numbers, square root of minus x, as The Black Girl falls as myna sex or maybe its Homophone less sex, and is clearly a reference to feminism. Along with economic power and male dominance, The Black Girl sees guns as the highest achievement of the white community. This anticipates the description of colonialism's trinity in Ngugi's Petals of Blood.

So, in a foreign branch, an Arabic discussing religion with a sorcerer. These seem to be a couple of great prophets in thin disguise. But their discussions only confuse the girl and their words skirt her questions.

And then she meets an Irishman, marries and settles down. She deal with him, their coffee-colored children, and the fruits of their garden. Note that she did not devote himself. She projects out, does not analyze the field. And in this utterly humanist universe she finds not only personal happiness, but also satisfied with the answers to her own metaphysical questions that religion itself can not even address.

And so, as the parable closes, we ponder whether the Irishman she marries is Shaw, and whether The Black Girl is the questioning, non-racist, non-sexist, socialist and humanist vision of the future, he has personally gone into.

And as for Lesser Tales, they are generally smaller. Don Giovanni explains itself was funny and a dead old Revolutionary Hero was prescient of the role of the Socialist Workers Party adopted in maintaining Margaret Thatcher in power in the 1980s. A large, historical and fundamentally contemporary read.